In sheer magnitude, this week’s Democratic victory—a sweeping repudiation, above all, of Donald Trump and the low, dishonest decade he has defined—makes the post-Watergate humbling seem modest. Both houses of Congress flipped, giving Democrats a substantial majority in each. The new Senate Majority Leader needn’t worry if, say, John Fetterman strolls across party lines. Nine of the ten most populous states will have Democratic governors. For those already anticipating the Presidential race in 2028, it’s significant that all the traditional battleground states (which Trump won just two years ago) have elected Democratic governors. The Party scored in unlikely places, particularly in the Midwest and the South. Texas, the second most populous state in the Union and reliably red for a generation, will have a Democratic senator (James Talarico), governor (Gina Hinojosa), and state House. Kansas—seriously, Kansas—elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in ninety-four years. Democrats also chalked up amazing wins in both Carolinas. The geographic shift was as pronounced as the demographic one. After moving toward Trump in 2024, many Latinos swung Democratic; so did many young white men. (Thanks for rethinking things, Joe Rogan!) And Black voters came out for Democratic candidates in huge numbers.
The diversity of “firsts” was heartening. The first Muslim in the Senate: Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan. The first Black female governor: Keisha Lance Bottoms, in Georgia. The first Latino governors to be elected in Texas (Hinojosa) and California (Xavier Becerra). New Mexico will have the first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland), and Minnesota will send the first Native American woman ever to the Senate (Peggy Flanagan). Even the near-misses were stunners. In ruby-red Florida, a Black democratic socialist named Angie Nixon almost became a senator. (And maybe she would have won had she gotten more funding, or had she been three jots less far to the left—hard to know.) This all happened after years in which the President and the Vice-President have deployed racist epithets, jokes, and myths. (“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! . . . They’re eating the cats!”) Laura Loomer, a court bigot for the Administration, made the Trumpian ideology clear when she wrote on X, “America was always intended to be a majority White country. Not a cesspool for third world minorities. America was founded as a Christian country. Not a Muslim country.” The midterms dealt that foul idea its greatest blow since Barack Obama’s ascent to the Presidency, in 2008.
The scale of the victory left no room for Trump to contrive a conspiracy theory and challenge the outcome. On Election Night, he was, by his perverse standards, gracious. He blamed Fox News for the Republican losses, “by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.” Separately, he claimed, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” #Classic.
The results were driven by the most urgent economic concerns of the voters: the spike in fuel prices, which followed the misbegotten tariffs and the war in Iran; the high cost of groceries, housing, and health care; and, for some, anxiety about data centers, artificial intelligence, and what all this portends for employment. But what is so striking about Trump’s second term is that he entered office intent, it now seems, on flaunting his cynicism, his greed, and his scorn for the American people. It was as if he actually meant to squander his support as quickly as possible. How else to explain the heedlessness of his behavior in office? On Day One, he gave pride of place at the Inauguration to a lineup of moguls who had agreed to bow to his power and his ego. They regularly traipsed to the White House, delivering gaudy house gifts and large donations to his pet projects. They smiled weakly as they were compelled to listen to his moronic rants and admire the latest ungapatchka embellishment of the gilded Oval Office. They spent tens of millions of dollars on his wife’s documentary about how taxing it is to endure the attentions of the help and how lonely it is to shuttle from one place to the next in limousines and private planes. As in any tin-pot autocracy, this was the price of doing business. Trump’s populism was always a fraud. Now he plainly didn’t care who knew. At a “jungle-themed” Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, costumed guests enjoyed seafood delicacies and a caviar bar. There was a caged zebra. Circus performers dangled from the ceiling. “Rich people, they spend nine hours getting ready,” the President merrily remarked of his pals. He was dressed in his usual blue suit. “I had ten minutes, so I came as Donald Trump.”
Trump has shown contempt for the law, as he hollowed out the Department of Justice and ordered federal agents to menace American cities from New York to Minneapolis to Los Angeles. He has shown contempt for culture and education, as he threatened and defunded one invaluable institution after another. He has shown contempt for competence, by stocking his Administration with preposterous, often odious, fourth-raters: Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller (incredibly, the new chief of staff), the Son-in-Law, the Ubiquitous One with the portable printer.
Abroad, Trump’s contempt for restraints on his power has been equally conspicuous. The United States’ closest allies found themselves coping with his arbitrary tariffs, his threats to shatter alliances, and his periodic intimations of invasion. What was the world to make of an American President who, with immense self-satisfaction, slathered praise on dictators like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Xi Jinping, while seeking to humiliate heroic democrats like Volodymyr Zelensky? Trump ordered his government to invade Venezuela, imprison its President, elevate a more compliant one, and start extracting that nation’s oil and gold. It was a regression to an earlier era of U.S. imperialism, when military intervention in Latin America was a standard instrument of Presidential power.
The most consequential result of the midterms has been to break the fever of Trumpism and to diminish its threat to democratic institutions, to personal and civil liberties, and to decency itself. Trump’s unique brand of lurid authoritarianism has finally lost appeal, and he has lost the plot. The election was also a vindication for those who had refused to submit. We are all too familiar by now with the many politicians, law partners, billionaires, C.E.O.s, university presidents, and others who cowered before Trump. Part of the reason we will survive the Trump era is that many more did their work honorably. Judges, civil-rights lawyers, academics, election officials, curators, artists, and countless ordinary citizens stood up. Their resistance to Trump’s bullying, corruption, and heartlessness has gained new political force.
After the midterms, the White House issued a “PSA” on social media: “Trump is still your president.” That is useful information. While he remains in office, his party is unlikely to rid itself of its cultlike obedience. J. D. Vance, his would-be successor, believes that he can win in two years simply by acknowledging the folly of going to war with Iran, while still aping the cruelty and dogma of his mentor. It is Vance’s conviction, he has said, that “Donald Trump will ultimately decide who’s going to be the Republican nominee.”
This is a moment of enormous relief and celebration. Trump can still do damage, and, in defeat, may prove even more unhinged and vengeful. But restraints in Congress and beyond are now far stronger. This aging autocrat, repudiated by an electorate he once believed to be under his spell, has been significantly weakened.
The Watergate babies arrived in Washington in 1975 resolved to transform American politics; when Jimmy Carter, a moderate Democrat, won the Presidency, their prospects seemed to brighten even more. Yet, just six years after their great electoral triumph, Ronald Reagan, a right-wing ideologue, was elected President and the Republicans captured the Senate. The reformers of 1974 found themselves defending gains they had expected to build on. They had helped change Washington, but the country was changing in ways they struggled to understand. The next Congress will succeed not through an obsession with retribution and punishment but by delivering on the myriad hopes and demands of the voters who elected its members. The Democrats of 2026 have won an extraordinary opportunity. What they make of it will determine what this election means.